The Boxer Poetry Class Story

Hi, it's Gilbert Godfrey, Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colossal podcast and I'm here with my co host Frank Santo Patre on and I'd like to give a shout out to two of our loyal contributors to Patreon . The first one is Ryan Story , Ryan's Story and the second one is Frederick . He didn't give me a last name . he So's kind of a fan, but he doesn't want people to know it. He doesn't want people to find him and go you actually listen to Gilbert Gottfried? That's what you do with your life. So he's just Frederick from Oslo Norway where it's, I think most of my fans are from Oslo Norway and but Frederick , get in touch with me and give me your last . I'll say your last name on the air , but also you can contribute to patron and it's friend for God's sake. What do the What the hell do I have you here for the one time I need you Usually you're just interrupting me when you're not wanted but now all of a sudden well you didn't send me up there and you just're le aving me out in the coat You want to know what happens to people ? And when people donate to Patreon? I'd love to Well , you donate a set amount every month and you get exclusive benefits ing early access to episodes. You get to take part in our very cool video hangout , which is just Gilbert images of Gilbert walking around in slippers he's stolen from various hotels social media shout outs like the one you just heard. And also we will read your Spiel or your whatever it is you want read on the show . And I understand the unibomber is a big fan of the show. Read his manifesto . So that's patreon dot com. You go to patreon dot com slash gilbert Gottfried to contribute to our show and it's sort of like PBS, Gilbert without the tote bag. Or a she er rocky. Just like that . So Mackenzie Phillips doesn't come on and bullshit for forty minutes while you're trying to watch a documentary about the mammas and the papas. Yeah, it's like you don't get behind the scenes information about Dalton Abbey . Dalton Abbey. Yeah, sure. again, that is patreon dot com folks slash Gilbert Gottfried. And thank you Ryan Story and Frederick of Oslo. Oslo, Norway . Tell us your last name for God's sake . Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried. This is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. I'm here with my co host Frank Santo Padre and we're coming to you today from the George Burns Room at the Historic New York Friars Club. And our guest today is one of the funniest and most prolific comedy writers of the past forty years . He's a multiple em i winner who's written classic shows like curb your enthusiasm and it's Gary Shandling which he also co created . He's written movies, Broadway, plays, novels . He's one of the he won the prestigious Thurber Award . He was also a staff writer on the original Saturday Night Live and an eyewitness to television comedy history , he's also the tallest Jew to ever work in show business or Pal vell . Well , you mean to tell me in the forty years that you claim that I've been doing this, I've never seen a Jew taller than myself that I've either looked eye level at somebody or down. Yes, yes. Who named some tall Jews, you know? Larry David's pretty tall. Oh, he is a tall Jewish. Where's Billy Crystal shorter? , Jeff Goldblum. That's a Jeff Goldblum. He's a very tall Jewish. But he's not a tall Jewish writer. He's a tall Jewish actor. Yes. Oh, we're talking only about tall Jewish writers. I thought you were. I could talk about any kind of told you want. I could talk about tall Jewish basketball players. Neil Simon is short. Ty not a pitch, but yeah, he's average. Yeah , so he's not a told you. Well, he was an average height for like our father's generation. Oh, yes. Short for our generation. Yes. What do you say? Allen, six. Two six one. six. Six foot. Okay. I just added the one because you did. I didn't want to feel bad. That's all right. Col Reiner's sort of tall. Oh yes, Col in's a tall Jew writer . He's also a ninety two year old Jewrider. Oh, yes, yes, yes. But I don't think he's lost height during these ninety two years. Now that's interesting 'cause most people lose height. Well, you know something . Now that I think about it, maybe I lost the same amount of height, so he looks just as tall. It could be that . Now what about Arthur Miller? He looked tall. He looked tall. Listen, would Marilyn Monroe marry a short Jew writer? I don't think so. Oh no. She married Joe Demagio who was I guess a tall Italian baseball player. Italian sitcom writer. Yes. Oh yeah, I was thinking of a different Joe Demages. Yeah, that's right. The Joe Damag you're talking about was a sitcom. He wrote from life for Reilly I mean, he spelled Demagio differently because he was actually a Jew . Yeah . I wish I had something to say to that, but I think you're right. Now you told us we're at the Friars Club. And you were telling us why you were delayed. Okay, okay, okay. I was delayed. Okay, and I think that this was really nice to me, and I think the twelve people who were listening to this will agree. You're generous . The upwards of a dozen people who might hear this will think that this was really nice to me. Knowing that this was a podcast, okay? Yeah. So I know that pod , that's a foot. Yeah. Oh, it? Is it? Like two pieces of pod? That's a Yeah . Is that right? Well, a pod is like see I always think in terms of like Kevin McCarthy warning Peace Pod Reference Yeah I'm with you I'm with you. See where I go a little bit more elementary like two peas in a pod. Yeah, but thinking we were going to be two peas in a pod, actually three peas because Frank is here. I thought I was doing everybody a big favor by going upstairs So are three peas? Two or three peas. So this is a Jew with bad prostate. Well, yeah, I peed three times. Plus , what I did was I went upstairs to the Friars Laboratory and I used mouthwash thinking we would be so close . Why would I want to offend people ? Yeah, it's a very considerate thing. You thought we'd be making out during the podcast. Listen , I have my dreams and if this goes the way I expected to, we can we can reach some sort of crest and and hug and whatever happens afterwards, I'm willing to go with you. Yes. You may be our most considerate guest out . Yeah . Now you're a writer right here . You know something I've heard that too. It's a vicious lie, but yes , I wake up five thirty every morning and I sit down and I try to be very funny . Yeah, it's really a pleasure. It's a living hell, the whole thing. You tried doing this. You have tried. I've tried and failed miserably . And that's why I'm doing a podcast So if I listen to you, I have a podcast in my future. Yeah, I give your cards. Which one I know who doesn't have a podcast? Well, they're not down to the disease yet. I understand. Tell us about watching the Van Dyke show as a kid and I actually got inspired. Well to tell us what your latest , you know , and I know lots of people who are my age who do what we do for a living , they say, why do you want to what made you want to become a comedy writer? And I know personally, and like I said, this same story is shared by others. I used to watch the Dick Van Dyck Show. I was like twelve years old when it came on . And you know, wow, wow, look at this. Comedy writer, a TV comedy writer. It's a nice looking man. He's got a very pretty wife, you know, Mary Tyler Moore , a very nice house in New Rochelle. They got a kid Rich,ie. And when he goes to work, he lies on his back on the couch and he jokes around with buddy I want to do that. That's very heavy little heavy, heavy lifting. That's what I want to do. Now you, then years later, when you were a working writer, a successful rider , you were in an elevator. Well this was we can put this in the sad columns . We like'd to start the show with sadness with sadness and then build from Rise from the ashes . I was writing a Steve Martin special that Lauren Michaels was producing for NBC . That's channel four, Gilbert. Okay . And we were rehearsing in these studios, I think called Nola. It was on Broadway in fifty seventh, and we were in studio A, rehearsing for this live special . Dick Van Dyke was doing a special and he was rehearsing in studio B . I knew he was in there and I waited one night for him to come out because I wanted to meet him and spend some time with him . He came out and we shared an elevator and on our way down, I just said to him. I said, Look, Mr. Van Dyck , I've got to tell you what kind of influence you are on me. I said, I want to watch his show , you know, married, had a kid. And my wife, we had just had our first son, Adam. I said, We just had our first son. I'm a comedy writer. We're gonna buy a house. Maybe we'll be New Rochelle, but if not, it will be sort of like New Rochelle. And I just wanted to thank you for everything for the inspiration . And he put his arm around me and he said, Alan, just a little word of warning here. After five years , the Dick Van Dyck show was canceled and I became an alcoholic . So I said gee, boy, I hope this elevator goes a lot faster than it's going right now. Couldn't wait to get off there. It really deflated me. And you said you actually started getting tear out. I did. Because this is I had nothing but good things and good thoughts and I thought that somebody wanted would like to hear that, that, you know, that they were an influence on somebody and that everything that he represented was coming true for me . This was probably the last thing I . I didn't expect it number one and I looked for like a little hint of, you know, like a wink or a thing they've made it's okay. But he was pretty serious about it. And I met him years later and he had no recollection of this , which led me to believe that he told his story to a lot of people. I'm like, oh yeah, you're the guy I told that to. Uh , that didn't come up. I heard you started crying I was a little bit of tears and I believe I banged on the elevated door at one point . Yeah, running and screamed why? Why, why, why? Why did I take this elevator? You were turning into Nancy Carrot. I had no doubt. Oh Jesus. Wow, look at this. We're twelve minutes into this in a Tanyaing Hard reference comes up. That's why Turn to Nancy Carrigan. That's great. Yes . Which who surprisingly is a told Jewish comedy writer. Well, look at this. See how this comes full circle? It's like a thicken that all ties in at the end . Now, how did you start in the business? Well, I started This decision was not made for me to become a comedy writer. This was not my idea . The decision was made for me about forty years ago by every law school in the United States . They all sat down, they looked at my LSAD scores, and they go, Now, this is silly. Who did this? Why even bother with this? I started writing jokes for stand up comedians who played the Catskills, Borschbelt . Every Morty, Mickey, Freddy, Dickie, and Lee that ever lived, I wrote for seven dollars. I wrote jokes for them . And that's how I started . They would pay me, and some of them were real pains in the ass because they would only pay me if the joke got a laugh. So I moved in with my parents after college . So I'm living at home on Long Island , and I would get in a car, borrow their car and drive up to the Catskill Mountains, which was only a hundred miles away and sit in the back of the Neville or the Concorde or some nightclub and watch them do the joke or jokes. And invariably they'd come off the stage and they go shaking their head, you know , you know, Alan, that joke about paving the driveway , went right into the toilet and I go, Gee, you know, I heard laughs so that we would bargain and I'd go home with four dollars . So I was going nowhere really, really fan. What were some of these comics, Alan, 'cause Gilbert and I were fans and we would know not them all. There were great guys also, Morty Gunti, who was in Broadway Danny Rose, Morty Guy. Yes, indeed he was. He was at the table at the Carnegie . Freddy Roman was very generous with me, very nice guy. Dick Capri was a nice great guy , Vick Arnell, Billy Baxter . Then there was Lee Stanley and Stanley Lee . And it was frustrating, you know, 'cause they were older than me. They were like it was like writing for my parents' friends. You know, I'm twenty one . And Freddie, who is very nice to me, says, Alan Spermbanks are in the news. Can you write me a Sperm Bank show I'm twenty one. Like I give a shit about sperm banks . So I write, you know, they have a new thing now called Sperm Banks, which is just like an ordinary bank except here after you make a deposit you l,ose'd interest . Okay . Great joke So now the word goes out. There's a new Sperm bank guy in town, okay? So another comic calls I've got Spermank jokes. Sperm bank jokes. So I wrote another one. I think it might have been for Freddie or maybe with somebody else. I looked into the future because they were freezing sperm . And I said, you know, this could be a problem in the future because it's hard enough telling the kids adopted. How do you tell me he's been defrosted? Okay. Seven dollars, ladies and gentlemen. Wasn't there an eighteen dollar joke even though the going rate was seven? Well, I'll tell you there was your feeding frenzy. I had making them. Okay. They got I got high. I got eighteen dollars for a joke that I had written about a hositic orgy, which was very unusual because the men were on one side of the room and the women were on the other side. They were they were clawing each other . They were telling the joke. They get to that joke It was just pure joke writing. These guys were interchangeable to a great extent. They were tuxedo guys who who got up on stage and told you jokes, but there was no distinct personality . Like years later, it was easier like writing for like Rodney because Rodney had a thing I don't get no respect. So to have him say even as an infant, I didn't get any respect. My mother wouldn't breastfeed me. She said she liked me as a friend. See, that was easy to have him say this stuff, you know? But these other guys were just pure joke writing . So I took all the jokes they wouldn't buy for me and I made it into a stand up act myself. And that's where I met you a million years ago. I went on stage at the improv and catch a rising star to tell these jokes. I was gonna ask when did you guys meet? Remember Gilbert at the improv. This must have been seventy four . Were you there? Oh yeah, yeah. He started when he was fifteen. Okay, I saw you, the first time I ever saw you, you had circ ular bar trays. I saw still using it . Why throw anything up? Yeah , why update anything? Because what was good forty years ago has it's back again in Pittsburgh now? It's it but used you to take two circular barge bar trays I remember and put them on either side of you and go ironsides . Geez, I remember that bit. And I became friends with Larry David and the people Elaine Busler was around back then and Blue Stone . And I remember you used to do a thing with Larry David where you'd be a heckler in the audience. Yeah, I'd be a guy from Palermo for some reason . I can't do accents, I can't do anything. For some reason, at one point in Larry's act when I thought that he had gotten more than enough laughs for that evening, I would come in and I would just start taking the chairs and tables and making sort of a ruckus over it and we would talk and I would be the he called me the Italian gentleman . And if you remember, we were just talking to Susie Esman about it , how Larry was like the worst on stage if he thought somebody wasn't laughing. Well, it was amazing because like on a Friday night, Bud Friedman would give me let's say the nine hundred twenty slot to go on. And let's say Larry was on at nine o'clock. Okay, so I would follow him theoretically twenty minutes later, but if I knew that Larry was getting on at nine , I'd also get to the club at nine because I could very well be getting on at nine hundred Y. If Larry didn't like what he saw out there because he would get up there sometimes for literally thirty seconds go I don't like you people and put the mic back and walk off . It was legendary what he used to do. I wonder if Suezy told you this is I'm quoting Larry now, okay ? We all used to sit in the back of the club because Larry was on a different plane than everybody, you know , and he'd get up on a Friday night at the improv and you had a real white bread sort of audience from Jersey with lime pants, you know, and blue hair. You know, you know who I'm talking about . And these fat wives would drag their husbands in. Now they're at the club. Larry in those days used to have wire rimmed glasses . He had hairs, and it was like a sort of curly afro . Yeah, yeah, like the Jew frock the Jewfro p. And he had a green army fatigue jacket. Oh, yes, yes. Right? Because he was in the reserves or something . And he'd get on stage and I'd be sitting in the back with other comedians and he'd look at it. Like I said, this it looks like the young Kippa audience out there, okay? This was not your hip room . And Larry's first words would be something along the lines. He says, I feel very comfortable with you people tonight . In fact, I feel so comfortable that I'm thinking of using the two form of the verb instead of stead . Now , I'm laughing my ass off in the back because A I think it's really funny and B , this audiences in oil painting at this point . There's like sagebrush going through. They're just they're just frozen . So you know, better than anyone that would ever a comedian hits a snag, you go another way, especially right out of the box. But Larry just kept on going. He says, I think a lot of people misuse the two form now He said like when they steep they stab Caesar, he looked at his friend Brutus and said A two Brutus . And even Brutus said, Caesar I just stabbed you ever if there was ever a time for who's dead. It's now and the audience would just st are at him and then he'd go, I don't like you people and walk off. And I'd get on at nine hundred and one. Susie said he was doing a bid and he involved a bungalow and somebody had the audience to say, What's a bungalow? And that was too much for him. He just switched. You didn't know that. This guy just left. He didn't want to deal with that. Anybody didn't know what a bungalow was. See, no, no, that I didn't know. Wow. Quite often they'd have to separate them. I thought Larry would get into a fight with someone like they were going outside. Well, the beautiful thing about Larry is he stuck to his guns and he waited for the rest of the world to catch up to him . You know what I mean? When you think about it, there were times that he would write scripts and he didn't have a pot to pee in, okay? He would write a script and producers were willing to give him what for him at that time was a lot of money . And but let's can we change that from a red tie to a blue tie? They give him a note like that. There he goes. That's supposed to be a red tie. Okay. He would when we , you know , when I was doing his Gary Shanling show, I gave him a script to write and it almost took a toll on our friendship because the show is in full stride at this point and changes had to be made in it. Larry script was fantast ic, but at that point it was for another show because the show had evolved into something else . And always saw things his way and it ended up that the world then became ready for Larry. The beautiful thing about him, and we're still best friends at this point is that if you go to our house and look through our albums, oh yeah, that's when Larry slept on our couch in the Hampton. So that's when Larry went with us to the Bahamas. My wife, you would buy him a pajamas or a toaster oven and stuff . And now he can walk down the street and go, that's a nice build ing, put that in the car . I need a new stadium, put that in there. And I'm just I couldn't be more proud of him. It's inspiring. How things got up . It's really inspiring and it should be a lesson to everybody. Yeah. Yeah , and we met you and I met at the Emperor. Yes, indeed. We did . And I always thought I always used to stay to watch you because I never saw anything like this before in my life. I didn't know how to describe it and I would go, home and tell people there's this guy . And I didn't get much further than that. I just said, There's this guy. And then one time my parents came to the club I went, that's the guy . A guy doing Ben Gazara jokes Ben Gazari jokes. Yeah . Yeah. So you decided to do your own material. Just to advertise my writing. Right. Just to advertise my writing and hoping that a manager, an agent, somebody would come in and help me get a job as a writer. You were doing your failed jokes getting the ones that they wouldn't advise the ones that didn't sell to those reactions. Well, there was one joke I wrote for them . There was one joke I wrote for them that they didn't buy. And when I ultimately auditioned with Lauren Michaels to show him my jokes because he was looking for writers for this brand new show that was going to be called Saturday Night Live . I typed up what I believed were eleven hundred of my best jokes. , and I met him in the city and he opened a book and the first book , first book, the first joke was a joke that I had written for the Catskill guys. None of them bought the joke. He read that one joke and he said very good and he closed the book and basically and he even tells the story that that joke turned his head around and very much got me the job. I mean, they read the rest of the jokes ultimately , but I had written a joke just to show you how long ago it was from the reference points saying that the post office was going to issue a stamp commemorating prostitution in the United States. It's a ten cent stamp. If you want to lick it, it's a quarter. It's okay. And he liked it, you know. And think about how long ago that was, there's no more ten cents there. Right. There's not even quarter cents. And you don't lick stamped nineteen seventy five. So I might as well be doing Brontosaurus jokes. Yes. There's barely a post office left . That's right. Yeah , that's right. Yeah. I wonder if I can change that into like an Instagram joke . No, I go to when I do my speaking engagements. If I'm speaking to people like our age, no explanation is needed. But if I'm going to a college with your seventeen and eighteen year old kids, when I get up to that to tell them that joke that got me the job on SNL, I hold my breath just a little because I don't know if it's gonna make sense to them. They're seventeen years old, eighteen years old. They have no concept that stamps were ever licked. Ready? Yeah. Very positive Mailing letters like something that's forgotten about. Yeah, those big things, those depositories on the corner, street quarters. Yes, that are painted red and blue steps of people shove stuff. What is that for? Yeah, think about it. I wonder about that. Has the mail has the post office is there less mail that's going out and around? Good question. Do messengers still exist given that there are emails and fax machines around . Yeah, I don't think there are messages too many messages have worked. I had a few messenger jobs when I really yeah. They said take this affidavit and break it down to yeah . Now I would have lost work . Now I feel badly about the work you would have lost. So Lauren offers you a job on the strength essentially of this one joke. Well, I think it turned his head a little bit but there were literally eleven hundred jokes down there that he had to show Dick Everso and the folks at NBC about. But yeah, I think that this yeah turned his head a bit . And you were offered another show. This was amazing as fate would have it. See, I was writing for all these comedians, okay ? And a lot of them used to open for Tody Fields. Do you remember her Yes. Okay, of course. Today Fields was managed by a man named Howie Hinderstein back then. And so I used to go to those shows that I wrote for these comedians for. I met this Howie Hinderstein because Todi Fields was the closing act. He took a liking to me . He was very friendly with the producers of Hollywood Squares . Okay . So he said, why don't you write a lot of questions and bluff answers for Paul Lynd? Maybe who knows be. May this could be your first job. So I wrote a bunch of them, I gave it to him. He submitted it literally the same week that Lauren gives me the job on this new show . I get this phone call . I'm going to I got a job if I wanted as a writer for the Hollywood Squares. Now it sounds crazy in retrospect, but nineteen seventy five , Hollywood Squares was going into like its ninth season . It was on the west coast where the whole industry is Prime Time, which was a higher pay scale . And it had all these stars. It was an established brand. Well, it was a South Trip, but individually in each box there was a star that had a Las Vegas ant on the right TV shows. That's right. This was a great entree into the business as opposed to East Coast , late night. Who watches television on Saturday night or eleven thirty? Except for people who can't get laid, right? . And who's John Beluci? And what is this? Sure . So there was a bit of a hesitation . What's the better career? All of a sudden, I had to make a career move from I was slicing locks in a delicate okay . So now all of a sudden I went from slicing locks going gee, I got a decision to make. Look who has a decision to make? I think you made the right one And why like Saturday night live, people don't realize how revolutionary it was because what were some of the other shows on the air? You know, back in those days and I have I remember them because I have I have a folder with the rejects that the rejection letters that they sent me when I would submit material. Carol Burnett was the gold standard at the time, but Rich Little had a show, the Jackson five had a show. Cosby had a show. Flip Wilson had a show. Everybody eventually had their own variety show. Bobby Vinton singers had their own . So that was, but I just remember growing up watching those kinds of variety shows. Sonny and Cher had a show, Bobby Darrin had a show and sitting and watching these shows. Tom Jones. Tom Jones had a show. Yes. Army vocal band. Oh, that was given a summer replacement for the summer replacement. That's right. And as a kid, I would watch these shows . I would hear people laughing on television at stuff that I didn't think was funny. I go what is this ? Whoa, this is crazy. But this there was something the way Lauren had described this show . It seemed like even if it didn't, if it wasn't going to be success ful, it was going to be the sensibility that I thought I had because it was geared to the sons and daughters of those comics that I couldn't write for. You know what I mean? It was K Allingan's children's generation, of which I was a part of. It was the baby boomers. And Lauren had always said, It's our time to make each other laugh. And that was the only standard that we had when the show started. He said, Let's make each other laugh and if we do, we'll put it on television. And hopefully there'll be enough people who like us and tell their friends about it. You're twenty four, twenty five. I was twenty four. Yeah. Yeah, when he hired me, twenty five when the show started. I remember like those you know , Frank and I quite often will talk about these different comedy shows and the writing on them , it's like it could be Bob Hope , it could be like a positive positive formula. I mean, they were written by older comedy, right? Well, they were written by older comedy older comedy writers, but what I didn't understand about it, I mean, look, we're all generally similar ages. And I remember who made us laugh and who didn't. And I couldn't understand look, with all due respect and I know that Bob Hope's regarded as like one of the greatest comics of all time. He made me laugh in those Bing Crosby movies. You know, yeah, the Road movies, but his monologues didn't make me laugh. I used to sit there and go, why are people laughing? It was to me it wasn't funny. To me it was, you know, it made my parents lau gh, okay? And here Lauren came along and he, you know, the host, the host of the first show is George Carlin, who made me laugh. Yeah, okay. I went to see the National Lampoon show and my God, I saw Belucia, I saw Bill Murray, I saw these people, and I'm going Lemmings. Okay, and I'm going, these are people who talk our language . So it made perfect sense that time was right for this. Now , this brings me to another thing. A famous incident on Saturday Night Live was comedy legend, one of the biggest comedy legends of all time. I think I know it's coming . Milton Burrow. Well , this was amazing because on paper , on paper, this there was some beautiful symmetry to this because he was the king of his generation. We were that to our generation . It was NBC and NBC. I don't know if it was the same studio. You would have to check that out , but it was a bit of , you know , it was homage to the guy who helped pave the way and when he came to do the show , it was incredibly disappointing to everyone. It was incredibly disappointing because he ripped or he comported himself in a way which was antithetical to the premise of the show. The premise of the show is basically whatever is was and you know, you play the moment and you feed off of each other . And he was too joke oriented. He was not so much about the improv. Okay, it was a different school altogether. I remember, for example, when he was rehearsing his opening monologue , all right . Dave Wilson was the director and he was in the booth and they were just rehearsing his opening monologue. I was in a studio so I, heard him do this . He said, Dave , when I get to this line about the water bottle, okay , I'd love to have a sound effect of like a crowbar falling on the studio floor and let it sort of reverberate for a couple of seconds before it comes to arrest because when it I am going to add lib It looks like NBC dropped another one . Listen to that sentence. I am going to add lib . This isn't what we did. Right . Okay, and there was another moment in the same monologue. If I remember correctly , he said to Dave Wilson , when I get to this spot in the monologue, cut me off. Don't go any lower than let's say my navel, okay ? He says because what he did was because below the frame of the TV , he made motions with his two hands . He says, I will do this motion with my hands when I tell them that I just turned seventy. That's what it was. I'll do that motion with my hand and they will give me a standing ovation . Because he know he knew playing clubs and concerts or whatever, that he could induce a standing ovation if he did that and that's what they did, that's what happened. It was unbearable . It was absolutely the opposite . And how disillusioning for you guys and Lauren who regarded him as a hero. Comedy hero. Absolutely. This was a forerunner. This was somebody that, you know , you know, you build things on the shoulders of giants, and who was bigger than Milton Burl, you know, in his day , you know ? It was very, very disillusioning. And if I'm not mistaken , it's one of the few shows that was never repeated. Yeah, I think I only saw it once, and it's probably not in the box set. You know, somebody remember the box set, they never sent me a box. Those are baskets. Yeah, they didn't send me a box . They say I think they had written a bit between him and Gilderadner as father and daughter. Wow, see, I don't even remember this. Wow . And they said it was gonna be like kind of a nice piece. Yeah , but he just started doing stick during all . See, that was the thing he couldn't play character. This was the guy if we go back in the annals of early television, he used to wear dresses and have the lipstick on and then they'd strude and that was comedy back then and it was huge comedy. People used to pull off the side of the they went home, what was it on Tuesday nights or something like that? Yeah, I think so yeah was the night to go to watch this and but he couldn't keep a straight face. He couldn't feed you . Generosity wasn't a big deal . We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this . USA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to ten percent. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at USA. com slash bundle restriction supply . This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are putting on a blockbuster triple headliner on Saturday may sixteenth at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. In the main event, Rhonda Rousey returns after nearly a decade to face fellow women's MMA pioneer Gina Corano. Plus co mains Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry, and the best heavyweight in the world, Francis Enganu versus Felipe Linz. Watch Rousey versus Corono, live tonight, only on Netflix . Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline? That's bullspin, and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions . My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had impressions . Cut the bullspend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend two hundred and fifty dollars on your first campaign and get a two hundred fifty dollars credit go to LinkedIn. com slash campaign turns to addition supply. Who were some of the other guest hosts that were nightmares ? I think that they, you know, they're a list of them on the internet . Yeah, people who've been banned from the show. Okay, okay. See, I don't know who was banned or not. I left the show in eighty . So the band list came afterwards. I know that there were people who weren't used to Louise Laser was difficult. I don't think she was used to the form. You know what it was people who I can't remember. I don't think Raquelle Welch was a day at the beach either. I want to ask you about the Groden episode because I always thought that was a put on beat, but it's considered that Charles Groden angered the cast because he because well, you know, that's not my recollection of it because I wrote I can't remember if there was a samurai. I used to write yeah sure Samurai. I can't remember if I do remember that it was a thing where Chuck would stop the sketch or he wanted to sing a song . Okay. Yeah. Okay , but I mean to my knowledge, to my recollection , I don't remember people getting pissed off at because we wrote a lot of things. And he was a great guy. He was such a put on artist too. And he was he was it so, tongue in cheek, right? He to this day is a real funny guy. So I don't remember him but I don't have anything but good memories of Chuck. And I remember reading a story that with Lou Laser , she was so out of it , that they were planning on doing all of her bits with Chevy Chase wearing a Mary Hartman wing . Wow, I missed that meeting. And I remember , actually , 'cause you mentioned her , when I was on Saturday night live, there was a cue card guy there who's an old guy . Al Siegel? Y Yeses. Yeah. , yes. Al Siegel. And he kept on gee, he gave him too many changes between dress and there he says, I already had one heart attack. I don't want another . And he was great. One of these guys who had been in the business like , you know, since like early Greek dramas and now he held up cue cards for like , you know, Aristophanes. Yes, exactly. And so I was talking to him and he was a very nice old guy . And I said, So you worked with everybody . And he goes, Yeah, yeah. And I said who were the real, who were the worst to work with? And he goes, I don't know , you find most big stars are surprisingly nice, considerate people, very kind people. And I said, But if you had to name a Total Bastard, and he immediately goes if you had to. Yeah. If you had a name at Total Bast, and he goes, Ricel Welch. Welcome. Yeah, I go . Yeah. And like I said, I can't really I don't oh, I do remember with a second . It's coming back . It's whoa whoa, whoa, I just had this flash . I can't remember I'm going to get some of this wrong, but this was the essence of it . I can't remember if she had a manager with her or she came by herself , but either she or this manager said we want to show off her mind. And they kept on saying, Oh, she's got an IQ of one hundred and seventy six . And then the comment the next day was up to one hundred and eighty three. By the time she did the show, it was boiling. Okay. It was like two hundred and twelve. Her IQ kept on going up. And that's what people are interested in watching Rick . Well, we could have we might as well have Madame Curie who goes that way. Okay, what are we talking about? But she or her spokesman, I can't remember who it was. So we want to show off her intelligence and her comedic , you know, potential. We don't we want to get away from the tits and ass part of it, okay ? She came in with a list of sketches to propose. Each one was big tits, big wait a second, we just had that other meeting. You know what I mean? So but I couldn't tell you what was in that God, it was so many years ago , but it was there was nothing memorable about it other than sometimes and you've done so much that you tend to remember the experience and not the product, you know, I've done things that were not successful, but in my mind I remember making that movie or that show . Who was my friend? Who did I bond with? And it was a good time. That's what I remember . And it's almost like a , you know, you know, as an afterthought, it's a footnote gone. Oh shit , Roger Ebert reviewed , I did a movie called North. Yes , sure . And Roger Ebert had a book out called the title of it was I hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. He was quoting the review he gave of my movie . Okay. Did you carry that review around? You know, I don't have my wallet on. He gets downstairs . Oh , you gotta, you got to get it. Can somebody can we none of the you know it may even be in my other bag. So I tell you what 's a better thing to do. Go on to your computer , Roger Ebert North review, the review of North. Okay. And if you can't print it out, let's bring over the lap top because I do this in my speaking engagements. I read it on the letterman show once. I took out my wallet and I read it. But to me, you know, I guess we'll get to review when Darrick gets it, the experience was this wonderful experience. Are these readers or those are prescription? Oh these are okay. Okay, bringing the laptop over. Okay, here is I won't read the whole review. I will read where is this ? Okay , let me set this up for you . This is Come with me to hell, will you? Okay, this is what happened . I left SNL, I started writing plays. I wanted to stay in New York. This was before its Gary Shanling show which brought me to LA . I wrote a book called North. Now our son, Adam , was a young boy who was about six years old, and he was at that age where Robert and I would be at the dinner table and he would look across the table at us and you knew from the expression on his face , the kid was thinking , I could do better than these two people. So I wrote a book about a boy. I called him North , and he felt unappreciated by his parents , so he declared himself a free agent and went around the world offering his services as a devoted son to the highest bidding set of parents. I wrote the book and sent the galleys to Rob Reiner, who had hosted the Third Saturday Night Live, and we were friends . And to this day, we're still very close friends. And he said, you know, in becoming, he loved the book, and he had done when Harry Met Sally, he had done a spinal tapped short thing. And he had just done a few good men. He said, let's make a movie out of this, okay ? Well, this is a writer's dream. You write a book, you hide to write the screenplay . And a fifty million dollar movie is made. Julia Louis Dref is Jason Alexander, Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood Alan Arkin, Elo Arkudi. Kathy Droid, who's that? Kathy Bates? Kathy Bates? Everybody's rebela but McIntyre. Abragota. Okay, Avagoda. And yes, Avagoda. And there's a big premiere in Hollywood, right? And I fly my parents out from Florida. Did we say Bruce Willis? We said Bruce Willis . And my parents are there and it's the biggest night of my life. Oh, and there was an eight year old girl , her first acting job, her name was Scarlett Johanson. She was in the morning . So this is the biggest night of my life. This is great . Next morning, the reviews come out, okay? And I don't know what your experience has been, but bad reviews are usually told to you by your family, not by friends. So my father would call and go, Don't Read Time Magazine Page sixty seven . Column three three. I wake up the next morning and Roger Ebert, who's the big job . It was Sisko and Ebert, right? Roger Ebert writes, I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated , hated, hated this movie . Hated it. Hated every simpering, stupid, vacant, audience insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that anyone would like it, hated the implied insult of the audience by its belief that anyone would actually be entertained by it. Now , on the surface , this may seem like an unfavorable review, but , I think there's subtlety between the two. There's subtlety. I think you sort of liked it . And we were living in LA at the time where everybody roots for everybody else to fail, you know? And my kids would come home from school and my son Adam would go, Dad we change our last name to Sorkin Wasn't there a playground story? There was a playground story. My son Adam , it was shortly after this movie came out. Adam was born in ' eighty one. Movie came out in ' ninety four. So he was twelve, thirteen years old , okay ? He went to a school called Crossroads, which is a private school there. And he had a fight on the playground , not a fist fight, but a back and forth verbal thing with Mike Ovitz's son. Okay. Chris Ovitz. Okay, so two twelve year old kids, you're fat. I'm not fat, you're this, you're a bad athlete, this and that. And then Chris Ovet says, Well, your father did North twelve year old kids fighting about box office, you see. That's cutting. Yeah So I said to Adam, I said, When he told us this at the at the dinner table that night, I'm going, what did you say back? He said, Well, I said, Well, at least people like my father. And I said, Oh, good. We're raising him. We're raising him well . So it was it was, you know, and that was just a nightmare. But now I carry it with my wallet and it's , you know, look, if I was the kind of person who was still sort of crippled by that, there'd be something incredibly wrong with me . So we'll get to a couple of more movies and again, Gary Shanling show, but just take us back for a second. SNL ends after a wonderful five year ride. I left in yeah after the nineteen seventy nine eighty season in May of eighty. Right before Gilbert came in right before Gilbert came in with Jean Yes. Dominion. Yes, it was the worst time to join Saturday Night Live . Well, yeah, I felt badly for all of you only because it was in the shadow of this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I understood. Now the cast changes like in the middle of a bit . What you say at the time, it felt like, you know, it felt like following . Yeah, if in the middle of Beatle Mania , you said John Paul, George and Ringo are gone, but there's these four other guys who call them the Beatles and like them just as much. That's a great way to put it. Who else was in your cast? the only two you'd know Joe Pisco and Eddie Murphy. Okay, I remember Denny Dylan. Okay, Denny Dylan. Very good. Again Matthias. Gail Mathias. Excellent. Christine Evers ol. No, she came later on. Chris Rocket was the name. Yeah, Charlie Rocket Charlie Rocket . And yeah, Anne Risley. Yeah, Ann Risley. Whoa. Few trivia buffs out there go. Yeah. I was Tim Kazirinsky in that was he came with AirOr came with Eversaw ay. So what happens now? After five years on the biggest thing on television? It was a shock to the system. I wanted to stay in New York. I wanted to be a New York writer. I was now married. We had our first child and we're living on the upper west side and I started writing plays and I wrote that book North . And I had been to the top and I turned down tons of work. A lot of doors were open ed, but I didn't want to do another variety show 'cause what could possibly be? Did you work on the new show a little bit for ? Well, that came much later. Okay. Well, much later nineteen eighty four When the new show came, I worked on that show and that was basically , you know, it was a reunion. You're Frank and David. Sure. I was a fan of that show. I was sorry to see it go. I think it lasted ten, twelve, thirteen shows or something like that. And I wasn't, while I wasn't really struggling, I wasn't thriving either. I was started writing other things that I wanted to do, magazine pieces and this and that, but then I got a phone call in ' eighty six from my manager, a man named Bernie Brillstein was my manager for thirty years . And he asked me if I knew who Gary Shanling was. And I said, yeah, I've seen him on TV . And he says, Well, he was doing a special for showtime . And they needed a fresh set of eyes to help like be the script consultant . So they sent me the script and they flew me out to LA and now I go straight from the airport to whatever restaurant to meet with Gary . And we spoke about the script and we spoke about that special that I would be helping Adon . And now I go back to my hotel room and I'm dead to the world because I'm on New York Time. I check in, I'm in bed. It's now one o'clock in the morning, which is four o'clock in the morning for my body, right? The phone rings in my hotel and I'm dead to the world and I pick a hello. Alan, it's Gary. I go Hey man, what's doing? Alan, my dog's penis tastes bitter. You think it's his diet or what? What? I called my wife Robert. I said, I think I found the writing partner . So for me , having written all those years in SNL, wrote with everybody, but Gilda and I wrote probably We were the team. I teamed up with her more than I also wrote with her Sargent and Ackword but Gilda and I were a bit of a team. Lightning struck twice because he was somebody else who thought the same way that I did and Shanling and I stopped its Gary Shanling show and that lasted four years. Gilbert and I want to talk about the Shanling show, but just before we get off , Christopher Lee is a favorite of ours. Did you write the Mr Death? Oh god Yes Yes that was originally Gilded then became a controversy over that and I know that a wonderful piece. I know that it was a weird thing. I had an idea because Christopherly played all these, you know, Mara of course. We're just trying to get him for the show. He's nineties. Is he really in? Yeah All the English hammer films. He was great. Giant . And so I had this idea where death comes back to apolog ize to a young girl for taking her dog. Okay that's all I knew about it . And I pitched it and we actually did it I think in dress rehearsal the previous week. I can't remember who the host was. It might have been a member of the cast who played Mr. Death . It was cut between dress and air and I remember that Dave Wilson, the director said, Why don't we do that sketch next week when Christopher Lee because he would be perfect to play Mr. Death ? So it was held over to the next week. I can't remember exactly what happened . I probably wrote it for Gilda . I wrote it with Herbs Sargent . I think Gilda might have contributed to the writing of it. Lorraine Newman had no idea that Gilda was a part of it. Lorraine was Lorraine was an innocent here in this thing . She wanted to play the role. She ultimately got the role in it. I don't know what happened for that to happen , but I do know that there were some hard feelings over it, but that's, you know, but Lorraine did an amazing job. Lorraine , in my estimation , God is she makes me laugh as much as anybody on the planet. I think she's to this day really funny. And I'm looking forward to seeing her at the fortieth reunion show I worked with her in problem child too. Oh, I grew up Newman . Now, see, and I'm glad you said that because I've heard stories where it makes Lorraine Newman look like aed bitch. No , no, if anything, Lorraine was a real lady about it and she felt awful . She had no idea that Gilda was A going to do it and B was involved in the writing of it. She had no idea . She might have been light in the show that week. And so on, you play it. No, she was a total innocent and she felt awful when everything came out. I remember singing and thinking it was such a tonal shift for the show. It was like a little mini one act play and I had seen every episode to that point. It was interesting . It was different. What I remember from that bit , the one line that I remember is the little girl says to death , did you kill our Lord ? And he goes, No, that was the Roman, it was a roman . I remember God so many years ago. Yeah, because my mother used to say to me I used to have friends who weren't Jewish when we were little, we were five and six and when they would go to catechism, let's say or parochial school, they'd come back , you know, after one day saying, I can't play with you anymore. You killed our Lord. Jesus, what a day at school that was . So I would tell my parents, you know, Joey, won't play with me anymore and she would say, No, no, we didn't kill him. The Romans did. So I put that in that side. Now also I got to get to the other part of Saturday Night Live that it was so famous like about like the drugs going on. You know, where I didn't see it because I was so high myself. Everybody else was doing , you know , look, it was the seventies and you know , I can't point fingers or anything like that. I have to start with myself. Let's put it this way. I don't know how I'm alive to this day . Given today's standards, you know, and what we know to be incredibly horrible for you at your body , there's no reason for me to be sitting over here. But I would have come back from the dead to be on this podcast. Pull that out of my ass, honor . Well, I want to just tell our twelve listeners if you can find that Christopher Lee sketch and it's in the box set it. Absolutely absolutely worth watching. It's in the slot that Milton Borough would have been in, but yeah yeah, . And so back to Shanling. Now, after a couple of years , you find yourself a new partner. I found a great partner Gary, and he made me laugh a lot. He was , you know, he was the single version of me . You know, I had gone out to LA to do his special . He told me about this idea he had for a show where he spoke to camera and he played himself and he was a single guy .in Ccoidentally , I had had an idea that I was going to pitch to NBC about a married guy was well, I wanted to do my version of the Dick Van Danger Comedy Ritter, your character. Yeah, it was a dick Fickan F Dantagic show I wanted to do . So we married the two ideas together and this was showtime , you know, this was ' eighty six . There was no really original comedy programming on cable. There had been a show on HBO . What was the name of it? It had the word on and it was two words and the second word was on where dream on? Dream on. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And but showtime, I don't believe had any original comedy programming , and we came along and they left us alone . They totally left us alone , and it snuck in there, you know? And but, you know, a lot of people didn't get showtime in those days. And so I remember what I would do is I would . I would make cassettes and mail them to the world of postal bills , the same post offices that don't exist , thrive for cake and send out these things. Look at this show I'm doing because nobody saw it. So I think after the third season the Fox network came into existence and what they did was they gave we gave showtime an exclusive window for thirty days to show its Gary Shanling show and as of day thirty one Fox was able to show it . I remember editing it for commercials and taking out some of the stuff that wasn't, you know, allowable . And it was hour on for an hour. They coupled it with Tracy Oldman on Sunday nights . So that's how it got a little bit more exposure . Not that Fox had a big universe back then either, but it was a few more people saw it . And it's such a smart show. And it was a show that rewarded people of our generation that grew up on traditional sitcoms by turning it on its head. Well, that's absolutely right. And I must say that Gary , for me, once again it was, to my mind, to the sitcom what SNL was to the variety Show, what Letterman was to the talk show . Whenever , you know, we had a thing on SNL and Gary and I did this on Gary Shanling show when SNL would be, okay, Carol Burnett would do it this way. How are we going to do it? So with Gary and I would be happy days or whatever the current and even the good, the really, really good sitcoms, which, you know, happy days was on and Mary Tyler Moore and these were good shows , but they would do it this way. We went a little bit more theatrical with it, you know , so it worked. You know , now one thing that audiences then thought was new , but really wasn't new was the breaking the fourth . Oh my God, you know, it was look, we paid homage to George Bysrne', whose room we're in right now? Yes, yes. I think he's buried in this. I hope he could. Yeah, because Burns in the middle of a bit would come out, stand in front of the TV, watch the TV, and go looks like Grace here . The first time . You know what he did? No, I'm going to get the players wrong , okay ? There was Harry Van Zel and there was another Harry Morton. Oh yes, the one 's the other . Okay. I think Van Zel was first and was replaced by Harry Morton, or it could have been the other way. But let's say it was that. Well, it was Fred Clark . Okay, was it Fred Clark who I'm thinking of? Yes. This is what I'm doing. Okay, correct me then maybe it was Fred Clark. What Burns did was in the middle of a bit where whoever we're talking about was married , okay? He said, I just want to tell you all that this guy, whoever it was , is leaving the show . He's done well. We wish him well , and he will be replaced by and he brought out the replacement and he says we've replaced by him, Fred Clark, Harry Von Zel, whoever was and he will and whoever the wife was like was Benederit or something . You two are now husband and wife. Okay, continue with the scene. He made a cast change in the middle of the bit and they just did it effortlessly. Which is so hip when you think about it in the middle of a scene replacing him introducing, okay, now you're a husband and wife now play nicely. And Benederick, she was she was like the Txriy character , a rubble spot. She was yes, she was Betty Rubble. Yeah, the voice of Betty Rubble. That's how as a kid she was also a petty god junk. That's right. Oh yes, that's right. Yeah . God I think that was that the first example of a show, certainly of a sitcom breaking the fourth wall like that where a character steps out of character . I don't know how far Jack Benny went. Yeah. I know he was in front of the curtain. Benny was a different show with a different Well, Benny pretended he was on stage talking to an audience I don't think was ever there . We were talking about Groucho breaking the fourth wall in horse feathers just slops the scene and walks out to the cabin and addresses the cabin. Absolutely. And then it goes back to the scene. So it wasn't that Byrnes had invented it, but I might have seen it for the first time on television with Burns. Sure. And but you know, I was of the generation where I first knew about Groucho Marks from You Bet Your Life and then learned that there were Marx Brothers movies. So the TV show came first . Yeah, that's how it happened with me the same order . And then when I saw duck soup and horse F,e Iather just' wents nuts and happy too. Yeah , and it's it's unbelievable that well Duck Soup is the one that killed their care that killed them at Paramount. Is that the biggest loser? And now you look at it and it changes best film. Yeah, lost them their contract. There's a book that may we might want to look up the exact title to. It's written by Roy Blunt Jr. And it's called remember in Duck Soup was Hail Hail Fredonia. Sure. Yes. This name of this book is Hail Hail Something else. And we'll find out in a second. Our research, our correct researcher researcher Darrick Gotfried . And if you read this book , it's about the making of duck soup. Really? Not only how certain lines were in the script changes and this and that, but it's against a backdrop of World War two hab starting. Here you go. Research has arrived . Hail hell, euphoria . And if I recommend this book to any Marxoth Bersr, than. Thankkss Darrick. Thank you to any Marx Brothers fan because it puts it into a global context of what was happening in Europe that the World War two was going to happen soon and all of that. Now, when they ask Grouto later, do you know did you purposely make some sort of satirical comment about what was happening? We were just trying to be funny, but if you do look at what it was in the midst of it's. pretty It sub versive. It's very subtle. I don't see how they couldn't have known there was nothing like it before. Maybe the great dictator, well, that was later. So there was nothing like it. It was incredible. Yeah. Yeah, and it's really pretty fascinating , you know , and it was the like one of the earliest political satires in film. That's what I mean. He went to war because he called him an upstart. Oh, yes, yes . It's a it's a studio yeah basically talking about how stupid war is. And it was so surreal that like their customs change in between scenes. Yeah, they'll have a civil war outfit on. Yeah . You know, and Margaret Dumont killed me in a wonder movie . And I had heard somewhere that she had no idea what they say was. Yeah, they said that's what made it so funny. That really didn't. I had no clue . So the Shanling Show is a big success. And what happened then? I mean, you're writing movies too. Well, this is wrong. I co wrote Dragnet with an Acroid , and that did well . So you're branching out its other marathon. Branch out and I started having plays produced here in New York at the Ensemble Studio Theater. They have a marathon every year. So I started doing that. And I hear you say you missed the immediacy of SNL that you wrote the thing that day and there was the laugh. Well, it was right now I write Broadway shows. I write movies and I write books. And if I'm lucky , it sees the light of day two years from now. Right . Here , they write the show on Tuesday. It's on television, Saturday . You I remember, you know, there's a dress rehearsal at for us with seven thirty, I think it might be eight o'clock now it doesn't matter with a full audience you do the whole show. Everybody's in wardrobe and the band plays, it's a show and then between dress and air it's determined what's going to stay in the show , what's going to be cut, and whatever's going to stay, you try to punch up and you bring, you know, make it as good as possible and bring it to cue cards, Al the cup. The late Al I remember that I would go upstairs if I got my changes into cute cards early enough, then it wasn't twenty four hour news. You know, it was the eleven o'clock news. I'd go upstairs, watch the eleven o'clock new s. And if something struck me as funny, I'd write a joke and it would be on television a half hour later. When I was with SNL, there were two shows where while they were on the air live doing wee,kend update . I was under the desk writing jokes and handing it out . One time in particular we did a live show from the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and we had all of these jokes about the floats and the balloons and the thing that was going to pass the reviewing stand where Jane Curtain and Buck Henry were reviewing the parade , something happened at the start of the parade that couldn't be predicted. There was an accident and somebody died . Okay ? So now we have all these jokes about this float that never came . Okay . I'm under the desk writing jokes this parade that didn't exist. And finally, remember the last joke I wrote that Mardi Gras is French for no parade. Oh, that's funny That's funny that was under the desk handing it up . That's funny. We will return to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colossal podcast , but first a word from our sponsor . 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When the Shanling show ended , I had a choice to make and this was a big mistake. It was a huge mistake. I was being offered all sorts of these were the days of the big studio deals . And Castle Rock , which was my friend Rob Reiner's company, offered me a three year deal with them to create TV shows for them. And I was hot off of Shanling. My manager, Bernie Brillstein , CBS was in deadlast in those years and they signed boy oh boy, God help me Farifa and Rhino Need. Oh good sports . And they okay and I got talked in I let allowed myself to get talked into doing it . And it was the only move I think I've ever made for the wrong reason . And I used to wake up in the middle of the night, and my wife, Robin, would say to me, What's the matter? And she said, You don't want to do this show, but I talked myself into doing it will be a big exposure. Maybe this would be the road to becoming Oh, I had also turned down . Previous to that, they asked me to be one of the producers on Cosby I turned it down and one of the producers on Roseanne and turned it down. So I'm going, , I got to do something. Yeah . So I chose this and it was the wrong move . We had a cast that had about three or four Tony awards among them. The writer's room had, oh God, seventeen, eighteen Emmy Awards among everyone, but the show just didn't work. For people that don't remember it, it was sort of it was about two people running an ESPN time way before Sport Night Sport Night was right. It was a US ESPN kind of thing. This is sort of screwball comedy approach. Well, this was just it was , you know, it was one of those situations that it just didn't work. It didn't work maybe because the chemistry between the two of them and they were living with each other . You know, and but then when that ended, when that went belly up, I did sign with Rob Riner kept his doors open for me. So I went there and did a couple of movies, did a number of pilots you did the st storyory of of us. Did the us with Bruce Williams and Michelle Fifer did a few pilots with Rob, did a special with Tom Hanks and other people at NBC at ABC . And ultimately there was a dip , there was a dip because nothing was getting traction, nothing . And I , what you want to call it, then my boyfriend Larry David came along with Kirby enthusiasm and I was a consulting producer on that for a couple of years. So that breathed life into my exposure anyway. And that, you know, and I was even on a show, you know, the last season of it. So and then when Billy Crystal asked me to co write seven hundred Sundays with him and I jumped all over that. And that's what basically brought me back to New York. We came here for rehearsals and previews and whatever. And I remember checking into what was then called the Riga Royal Hotel. It's not a London hotel where it says how many nights your stay will be. And it said fifty. So I was here a long time and our kids were getting older and they were starting to tip in this direction as they were leaving the house . So we came home and it was a good move. It proved to be okay. I've been writing books and I have to tell us about the other Shulman. Well, the Other Shulman was a novel that I wrote which won the Thurber Prize. You had mentioned it in your lovely intro of American Huma. It was and that was very because I love the premise of the book. Well, it was it was an autobiographical novel about a guy who was having trouble in his career. Okay, he wasn't a comedy writer. He owned a stationery store and he was having a rocky time in his marriage in his home . So what he basically did, he did what I did, when things weren't clicking for me , I saw a sign that said you two can complete a marathon. And this sign was in a Ben and Jerry's . And I went home, I told Rob, and I said, I told her about this sign, and she said, You should do that. I go, Do what? You should run a marathon. I said, I'm a Jew. At best, I run for a bus, at best . And she said, No, she says, you're feeling sorry for yourself. This is after that horrible North review and all that and some TV shows got canceled . And she said, You gotta get, you got to refresh your head. You got to revise you need a goal to achieve. You got to get out of the house, you gotta get off the couch. So I joined the running group and I entered and I ran the New York City marathon. Well let me let me correct myself here a little bit when I say I ran the marathon let's talk about the word ran . You know the New York City Marathon. You start in Staten Island , go over the Verizano Bridge. Yeah, now you're in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, Manhattan again, into Central Park West, tab it on the Green twenty six point two miles later, you run a marathon . I line up with thirty three thousand other people on your mark, get set, go . I leave Staten Island. I go over the Verizono Brid ge. Now I'm in Brooklyn about four miles into the race when word comes back that the winner had not only crossed the finish line, but was already on a plane back to Kenya . But it was a nice day. So I went . But moving back here did prove to be a wonderful thing because that book won an award. That book is about a guy running the marathon and what his life is like today and a lot of flashbacks. And it's very clever because each chapter is another miles that is twenty six point two chapters in the book. There are a children's picture book called Our Tree Named Steve. I wrote a novel with Dave Barry L Cunallatics, which they're threaten ing to make a movie out of, and I've got a couple more books coming up. And I was asked to write the book for a Broadway musical version of Field of Dreams. So hopefully that will happen, but I was asked if I'd like to do it. And you never saw a Jew raise his hand. That's a wonderful movie and a wonderful book. And speaking of Larry David, did I hear this correctly or find this in my research . You inspired the famous PEZ Seinfeld episode? Larry and I went to when we were hanging out in New York, okay ? We would do stuff on a Sunday afternoon and there was we went on upper west side in one of those like churches or something there . There was a Sunday afternoon concert given by a pianist named Claude Fr , and Larry and I were sitting in the first row . And on the ground, on the floor in front of one of us was a pes dispenser . And for some reason, we got the giggles because of the pes dispenser. And years later, he used it. To his credit. Now Larry is a genius that can take the smallest little thing that we all pass over and don't even think about and you'll make a whole meal out of it. It's something that I just marvel at. Stuff that we just sort of glide by, you know , he'll stop and we'll make something out of it . Like pesticides. Yeah, there turned out to be an iconic television moment . Who were some of the other people back at the Improv back when you guys were met there, yeah. Okay, Glenn Super. Yeah. Well, the bullhorn good at bullhorn. Yes. Okay. Yes, yes. Ed Bluestone who had the greatest one line guys over. Oh, yeah. He had great one line jokes. It's a lot of ways you can be offensive at someone's funeral . Shake the widow's hand with an electric buzzer . He used to talk about Jewish hunting You shoot the animals while they're still in the cage . And he said sometimes they make it really dary. They leave his feet untied. . So he was there. Wayne Klein was there. Jay Leno was there. Oh yes. I worked with Wayne Klein. He went, he was a Leno writer. Yeah, yeah. Good guy. Yeah. And y Kaufman would come in. Andy Kaufman would come in wait a second. Robert Klein would come in every so often a Brenna Danger field all the time. Danger field . Talking about the catch now in the seventies? Well, catch old catch . The catch from the seventies. We're talking about seventy four, seventy five. Well, catch a different some performers only performed in one place and some performed in both places. When I was working at Catch, like in the very beginning , Gabe Kaplan would still be there. Wouldn't it was this before Welcome back Con? Yes . He used to do it as a bit the Welcome back . Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, he used to talk about there was this group and there was horse shack. Oh the, sweat hogs. Yeah. Oh, wow. I didn't even know that. And then yeah, it was just like another bit he had. There was I saw him a couple of years ago I wasn't playing I don't play poker, but I was over somebody's house and there was a poker game that I think he's like a game. Yeah, he's a championship poker player. But back then there was a woman named Emily Levine. Oh yeah . There was Billy, but Billy Crystal was mostly I don't think catch as much as I think it was catch more so the improv. He was there. Same with Brenna, I think. I remember mostly from a catcher rising star. Oh, there was a guy Lenny Schultz. Oh, Lenny Schultz . Yes. Yes. Sure he's still around. Is he really? Well, I don't know if he works. He's alive . He's alive. Lenny Schultz. Yeah. I remember him in a chicken suit. Oh yeah, yeah, he did, he would just go nuts on stage. He would come in with a chaise lounge and he would open and close it and you like an accordion prop comic . Oh Larry Raglan Larry Raglan. Oh yeah I went when Bob Saget was on the show he asked me to sing the famous Larry Rag song Dummy in the Window. Oh god, dummy window. That's right . Oh, someone else remembers Dummy in the Windows. Wait a second, not only Dummy in the Window. You have a Carl Waxman. Yes. Okay , who was who had a reputation at the time for Yes , for appropriating other people's materials? I think Billy Crystal. I thought it was Richard Lewis. Oh, okay. Richard said about Carl ? Well, Carl drove by after work one day and Richard Lewis said that's a stolen car . I think it was Billy Crystal who was there and Carl Waxman was on stage and afterwards Billy Crystal went over to him and said, You know that bit you do about the supermarket Robbert Klein's been doing that for six years . And Cale Waxman goes, Oh yeah, well I've been doing it for four So it's sort of squarious . Yeah, it's squatter's rights in a way that 's so hilarious. It's not only a joke thief , but it's bad at mad. He's bad at mess. Thinking that four was bigger than six . There was there was there was a couple oh, the what was the name of the the Untouchables was about touchable. Marvin Bravaman ? Buddy Mantino , Bobby Alto. Yes. Thank you to Buddy said it in on one of our podcasts. And then it when Marvin Bravaman moved to L. A. to try to pursue a career there , then it was just Alto and Mantia. Oh they did no longer the untouchable . They were just I didn't know that they went through that . Was Dennis Wolfberg around then? Oh yeah. Oh wow. Funny guy . Wow. Yeah. No, this is Ronnie Shakes . Oh, yeah. Oh, he was funny. He died, right? Yeah. He died in like forty or something. Yeah, and Dennis too. Dennis died young. But Ronnie Shakes had a line that made me crazy that I loved . He said that he had been going to this same shrink for like eight years . And he said, and this afternoon I saw him and he said three words to me after eight years that brought tears to my eyes . No oblo English No we all do this for a living , but there are certain jokes and certain things you go wow, okay? That was when I was with SNL when we used to have read through , I suggest sit back and there'll be other people who write sketches like, Oh shit, I should have written that. Oh, I could have done this. But when Dan Ackroyd read anything that he wrote is if I live to be a thousand , there's no way I can write basematic take a fish, put it in a blend and then drink and you know, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. I was always fond of the joke about when Professor Backwards was murdered. The joke that was on update. Yeah, was that your joke? No , it was Michael O'Donnelli who wrote that joke. Professor Backwoods died. He was murdered, and it seems like 'cause nobody responded to his cries of pl . That was Michael O'Donni, you're right. I mean, Michael O'Doniney was his genus when he would write something, I just sat back and you know, with O'Donney, I did a couple of speaking engagements at colleges with him and we did two on the same trip like the University of Akron and we had a we did it. I did forty minutes and then he came out and did forty minutes and now we're driving from Akron to some place in Indiana, and I can't remember the exact school , okay ? And he says, What if we do something together at this next place? I said, Okay, like what ? Now Franken had been very, very successful. He was writing point counterpoint as a bit for Dan foot and Jane Curtain. So he says, What if we do a point counterpoint? And I said, Okay, fine. So I said, What should the subject be? So he said to me , why don't you do the anti antisemitism point And I'll do the pro anti Semitism counterpoint . I had no idea what I said, okay, fine . So before the performance I went to my room and I wrote the anti anti Semitism point , having no idea what he was going to write. Okay ? We're in the middle of God's country in a field house . So I did forty minutes, Michael did for ty minutes, and then he says, and now bring Alan back and he and I are going to do point counter point . He says, here with the anti anti Semitism point is Allen. And I had written something, it wasn't very funny. I didn't know how to make this funny . Maybe there was a titter or two in it and it was quick . And now he does the pro anti Semitism at a point . And he starts off saying , Allen, you overweight , heb uck . He comes he He continues to whatever he said, call me every Jewish slur that my people have been trying to get rid of for centuries He was brilliant. He was brilliant. I have there's one other story about him, which is probably better than this one . I was producing the weekend update segment of the show, the third or fourth, though Michael was only there a couple years of or whenever he was there . And he called me. He said, What if Wekend Update is brought to you by a product that we make up ? I said, Okay, fine, go for it. So this particular week he had Don Pardo say a now weekend update brought to you by Pussy Whip. Oh yes the dessert topping for catch. Remember it was and it worked really great . So there was this censor on the show, Jane Crowley. I don't know if she was there when you were there. No, no. I had one named Clotworthy. Oh, Bill Clotworthy. Good guy. She was on the show and following week I wanted to do a sponsor for weekend update . So for the dress rehearsal , I had part of say and now weekend update brought to you by blue balls. Blue balls BL E l Balls. The cheese snack from France. . It works great during the dress rehearsal . Jane Crowley comes out of the control room and she finds me and she says, You can't say that when we go on the air Why? She says, You can't say blue balls. I go, why? And she says, 'cause it has to do with the male genitalia . I said, Well, last wee k you let us say Pussy Whip , which is clearly the female genitalia, but now this week , what kind of sexist organization are you running ? And she said , give me a minute. And she goes to the control room, picks up a phone, calls God , I guess. She comes back ten, fifteen minutes later, she finds me and she says, Allen, give a lot of thought and I've come to the conclusion that because I gave you Pussy Whip last week , I'll be more than happy to give you blue balls this week . And I just said , That's not necessary. Just let us say it on TV . We'll call it even . That's great. I just remembered a censored joke and having to do with my trays by the way . I did one joke with the trays saying , you know, Dolly Pardon holding them against my chest. Right . And then I held it against my crotch, saying Dolly Pardon's brother . So so they said this girl goes okay, this is this woman there with the headset on the Janet Jackson headset they all wear. She goes alright I had to check it with with the stud io . Okay, and she explains the joke to them and very seriously , she turns to me and says keep the tits, drop the balls. Yeah . Here's a note, here's a good note to get Oh, and before I forget, because we were talking about Ronnie Shakes, maybe we'll put it back in there . My favorite Ronnie Shakes joke was one that he said my biggest fantasy in life is to have sex with two women not in a nighttime and in a whole life which . You guys got to you have to get to dinner. Oh God. We should wrap this up. Okay, can we real quick before we go, can we get you to tell the boxer story . Which is such a wonderful story. Well, yeah, I've done it on TV a few times, who do you want me to do it? I think it's for people that haven't heard it, it's worth it. I had worth repeating when I was running the marathon . Okay. It was like running through my life because, you know, I was born in Brooklyn. My dad always had his place in Manhattan. The Yankees were in the Bronx . So it was, you know, sense memories. And I remember running through Queens . And I had this flashback because Simon and Garfunkel, my favorite singers , were from Queens, and it just it brought back a memory I had from when I was in college I had a poetry writing class and the teacher was this ninety two year old woman, this old crone named Ruth Katz . And I was failing the class . All right . And if I failed the class, who knows, I might have failed out of college. Vietnam was raging . So So I had one more shot at submitting a poem that maybe she would like , and like I said, Paul Simon was my idol to this day, you know it's uncanny kind of poet he is . So what I did was figuring she's ninety two . She wouldn't recognize the fact that I submitted the words to the boxer As my poem, she's ninety two . So I submitted it. We handed our journals on Friday. On Monday, we're in class. She's handing back the journals and she said, I read a poem this weekend that just knocked my socks off Alan . Alan, can you come up and read it to the clash ? So and I'm going no, I really don't. I'm glad you like my poem, but I don't like talking in front of people. I just don't like that . And she prevails on me . Now you understand , everyone in the class are my friends or my age, at least, all of whom had record collections. And I'm about to read the liner notes, the biggest song The one like grammes that yeah, okay. So I get up in front of the class, I look at the time and I see there's still forty minutes left in the period. So there's no way I'm running out of the clock here . I take one more look over at Dr. Katz . It's very disappointed to see she was still alive , okay ? And I take the poem and I start going , I am just a po or boy, though my story is seldom told . I have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles such or promises . All lies and jests that a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. I take a breather, I look over the paper , and the whole class is like , what ? Huh ? And I look over at doctor Katz and she's beaming. She's just beaming at this Jew poet who somehow captured the grittiness of New York Streets . And she goes, continue . When I left my home and my family , I was no more than a boy in the company of strangers in the quiet of the railway station, running scared , laying low, seeking out the poor quarters where the ragged people go , looking for the places only they would know . And that's when it happened. That's when everyone in the class starteding sing, li , li e li . And I look over at my teacher. The ninety year old woman just says to Resercs. It's inspiring, isn't it? My favorite story . You know, you reminded me Dinner's gonna be late. No, it wasn't even like a funny story, but you were talking about the Vietnam Wars somewhere at home . I still have a draft registration card. Wow . Because by law you had to go in and register for the draft . And I remember my mother going with me and so that was a scary time . Very scary. What number did you get in the draft? Do you remember? Was it high enough to was empty? Well, they never actually notified me, thankfully. Because there was a lottery if you remember. They had sixty six I had the card that I was registered. No, it's real scary stuff. Very, very scary . Anyway, what do you have some stuff to plug right now? Oh, I have a young adult book coming out in September . It's a real funny book that I wrote with a guy named Adam Mansback. Adam Mansback wrote a children's book a couple of years ago that sold a gazillion copies. The name of the book is Go to Fuck to Sleep. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's really funny and what's really, really funny if you listen to the audio version, Samuel Old Jackson is reading a listen to it. It's great. And Samuel Jackson, go to fuck to sedleep and getting an gry. So we met a couple about a year and a half ago and we wrote a young adult book called right now it's tentatively called Benjamin Franklin, Huge Pain in my ass, okay? But hype , we may not be able to use the word ass. It's amazing that I wrote a book with a guy who wrote Go to Fuck to Sleep. That was okay. But ass might be bad . Okay . So I'll plug that and field of dreams. Well, God knows. I'm just hoping that that comes about. And I'm writing another book with Dave Barry . So like we said, prolific at the at moment the mom ent until this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast from the George Burns Room in the Friars Club in New York . I'm here with my co host Frank Santo Padre and we've been talking to someone who may or may not be the tallest Jew writer